“What’s going to happen?” is the big question. I’ve gone round and round, with and without my tinfoil hat on, and every time I sit on the stump in the garden I have the answer – but the words aren’t there. But I finally got today – “shopping is over”.
For our whole lives, and most of our parent’s lives, too, shopping has been a given. You get an idea for something wanted, jump in the car and go get it. The last decade or so if you were running short of cash it went on the credit card. “Broke” is relative. The booming economy we’ve had made it assured that you’d make more next year than this year. Jobs everywhere. Dirt cheap financing. Etc. I want it, I can have it now is damn near cellular knowledge, and the end of that is going to be the biggest shock JQ Public is going to face, as trivial as that sounds.
On the stump today I wanted a Coke. Three or four years ago I wouldn’t have had a problem with hopping in the car and driving the eight miles round trip to the nearest quickie mart and buying a twelve pack for a couple of bucks. Today it’s over five bucks, plus gas costs which are a factor in any distance calculation at 4 bucks a gallon. So I made coffee instead. I can get some Coke on the once a week shopping trip to town, but the same thing is going to happen next week as has happened for months – I’m going to be looking at Coke and once again decide that I don’t need it at 5 bucks a 12 pack. Or donuts, or steak, or a new shirt, plastic widget, whatever. I leave the store with beans, rice, raisins, peanut butter, salt, and the like.
And I’m a fuckin’ Doomer. This is all voluntary – I derive a certain pleasure out of powering down and living simple. Collapse will be when somebody stares at the bank and credit card statements and realizes “I can’t have that new _____ I want”. Ever. Not being able to afford some purchase has been quantified by not wanting it that badly in the first place – something else was more desired at the time. Screw the golf bags – I’m getting the boat motor this month. Collapse is letting the golf club membership expire. For those on the lower end of the spectrum the option of switching to a cheaper brand of beer has disappeared – no beer is the new reality. Fishing a smokable butt out of the ashtray isn’t just for bums anymore, it’s like a little gift from God. Not going anywhere on the weekend (except maybe to the pawn shop) feels like house arrest for go go shop shoppers across America, I’m curious to see what sort of mean cornered rat behavior will surface when consumer addicts can’t get their fix.
I don’t even think war will fix it. I see no evidence that personal sacrifice for the sake of the nation can be generated in a population that has been subject to the war on terror for so long it’s just background noise. Fuck you, gimmee is the national creedo – people are more likely to slip into the neighbor’s back yard and swipe the aluminum can stash off the porch than to help him dig a garden. I’m not even sure a fix is necessary – this country is so fat that we could drop down the consumer ladder by orders of magnitude before any real hardship is hit. Foreclosed and evicted? Move in with Mom and Dad or rent some cheap dive that’s the envy of a third world tin shacker. Bank bellies up – who cares? Didn’t have any money in the account anyway. Job loss? Woo hoo! I can now use the ER instead of paying the insurance premiums and we get Food Stamps! But that void in the psyche every time you pass a WalMart is going to be so sadly uncomfortable… “I wish I had some money to buy something… anything. It’s just not fair“.
The American Way of Life is still non- negotiable, it’s just that one by one, folks won’t be in the game anymore.
You’re right when you supermarkets are going to be closed one day. But trading is perhaps one of the oldest humans activities, it will still exist, at the very least on a local basis.
Garage sales are one such possibilities, but improvised vegetable & meat markets, or food traded as payment for work, will surely exist.
Very interesting blog, every article has sound info. Keep it up, and keep living the dream !
Hi Solsys, thanks for posting a comment.
Your email is an @ifrance so I’m guessing you’re not native to the US. If that’s the case I doubt you can fathom the depths of our shopaholic disease. I’ve seen people become physically twitchy when they haven’t gone shopping for a couple of days. Keep them in the house long enough they’ll slash their wrists or something to give them an excuse to go to town to the Emergency Room… where the Coke machine in the lobby awaits!
Comrade,
I like your post. What you observe matches my observations also.
Oh crap, I need to go to town and get some more chicken wire for the expanded garden for next year before metal prices go up anymore. And while I’m at it, what about ……….
Oh, and by the way, tried the maggot bucket and it rained hard and drwoned the little buggers. sigh. next year. lol
Thanks for your welcome, comrade Simba.
I can deifinitely see what you’re saying, it’s the same in France, and it’s even the case for me sometimes.
However, since I gave away my TV set, things have calmed down a bit on these consumerist urges. If there is a huge SHTF situation, with no TV, then people will really feel the pain. You can’t get rid of something that takes more than three hours of your daytime that easily.
And far worse will be the disappearance of the internet. While TV will, IMHO, always be around now (even in a 1 set for 300 people situation, like in the Third World), because it’s simply a receiver, the Internet will be much harder to maintain.
And to whom will you blog to, then ? And to whom will I respond ?
If we see the items that make up our day, the losses we are about to face are going to be very hard to experience for most people. Like you said, doomers chose to live that way, others actually expected things to stay the way they were, or to actually improve !
On a related note, the service industry is about over, too.
We’re working to cut back on expenses, so we dropped the lawn service, the pest control service (kept the termite contract, though), cut back to basic basic basic cable ($12.46 a month), cut back to a 750kbps upload on the DSL and cut down on eating out. That and any ethanol consumed is consumed at home, not at a restaurant.
But as I made the calls to drop service, I also apologized because that means some folks are going to be losing their jobs at a time they can’t afford it either.
We’re keeping the gardening store and Home Depot happy for a while longer, however.
Good night, and good luck.
Seems like returning to the way I grew up. Remember when a trip to town or the store was worth putting on fresh clothes? Or going for a long drive *without* having a soda/water bottle along? It was easy to get into bad habits because they are so comfortable, so easy, and so what you just do. A friend ranted because his wife took the 3 girls to buy a pair of flip-flops for the beach and came home with 25 pairs!! Because they were cheap, and the girls had their own size, and they needed different colors to match their different outfits, and didn’t he want better for his girls?…
We will miss the ‘let’s go for a drive’ days with a cold soda, but it is hard to be a consummer when you don’t use or even have a credit card. I am still surprised at what people consider necessities, though I most likely have a few surprises left to discover about myself. Though it is odd to see the Walmart parking lot so empty. It and the Dollar store are the only places to shop in this small town.
We are doing the same no drive for small something too. Isn’t it odd to realize how much driving everyone does for nothing?
I’m wondering just how many wrists are gonna get slit when toilet paper, paper towels and Kleenex are unavailable. I have met people that cannot conceive of that happening. lol We have sure forgot just how recent these things became available. People better start finding out how to do without such stuff pretty soon.